13 August 2012

Fornication's Pain

A sobering, research-based passage from Christian Smith's Lost in Transition (successor to Soul Searching) that focuses on 18-23-year-olds rather than teens.

Some recent accounts of young adult sexual behaviors seem to want to suggest . . . that all is indeed well. Some writers celebrate young women's sexual license as a way to cheer on the alleged evening of the old double standard for men and women when it comes to sexual adventuring.

Others, in documenting the sex lives of youth, hardly veil their enthusiasm for the spread of serious sexual activity among them. As long as sex is "safe" and consensual, these writers seem happy to expand freedom to larger segments of youth and to increasingly lower ages.

We are less upbeat.

To be clear, we do not raise doubts about these optimistic viewpoints because we are puritanical prudes intent on eliminating pleasure from young people's lives. We raise doubts because we have heard too much directly from the mouths of emerging adults themselves about the major pain and damage that their free pursuit of sexual pleasure has often caused in their lives.

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A human being. Living with my dear wife and five delightful offspring in Wheaton, Illinois. Senior VP for Bible Publishing at Crossway. More messed up than this blog will let on. I live (2 Cor 5:15) to delight in (Ps 37:4) and display (1 Tim 1:16) the glory (Rom 15:8-9) of the grace (Eph 1:6) of God in Christ (Col 1:15). Saddle up.

My Portion

"The LORD is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in him." The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him; let him put his mouth in the dust--there may yet be hope; let him give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults. For the LORD will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men.--Lamentations 3:24-32

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